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Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles

Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles

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Author: Ray Daniels
Publisher: Brewers Publications
Category: Book

List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $15.51
You Save: $9.44 (38%)



New (32) Used (11) from $15.43

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars 63 reviews
Sales Rank: 3389

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 404
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 7 x 1

ISBN: 0937381500
Dewey Decimal Number: 663.42
EAN: 9780937381502
ASIN: 0937381500

Publication Date: January 25, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.

Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 63
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5 out of 5 stars Fantastic Reference - waiting for 2nd version   August 4, 2008
This is my number one reference book for designing my new batches of beer, but I'm looking for a better one. This is the book I pick up when I decide to brew a new batch. It has excellent technical info in the first half of the book (*however, I'd prefer an even more in depth discussion of mathematics, since I like to calculate these things for my beers - I end up struggling with converting the equations to ways that I can use - I wish there were more equations and a more complicated discussion of mathematical things such as calculating hop utilization, controlling mash techniques for sugar profiles, fermentation temperature control, and brew chemistry). The second half has a short, well written history and background for each of beer discussed, and compares many recipes within a given style, providing the reader an adequite understanding of the style so that you can design one for yourself. Useful tables and graphs are available for every type of beer discussed, such as the percentage of beers that used a particular type of grain, and the range of % malt bill for each grain. **I wish the 2nd half of the book would have a seperate section for each of the 20-something beer style categories. I highly recommend this book. I wish he would design a 2nd volume that would delve a little deeper, though.


5 out of 5 stars just what i was looking for   August 4, 2008
gives a great base to create your own recipes based on the style you are looking for. should be easy to adjust your second and third batches if need be


2 out of 5 stars Good for reference   July 13, 2008
 0 out of 2 found this review helpful

It is a very technical book with lots of graphs and charts. If I ever have any technical homebrew questions, I will pull out this book. I might need to go back to college and get a masters degree to understand it, but I do now own it. Until I need it, it will just collect dust as part of my homebrew book collection.


4 out of 5 stars Missing a few key things   May 13, 2008
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

This is a really great book overall that gets down and dirty into tons of info on specific styles. The beginning goes over the basic ingredients and techniques, but it's the style chapters that really shine. Daniels has done a ton of research and complied a ton of data to break down exactly what goes into different styles of beer and gives a fantastic building block for designing your own version of the style.
I dock one star for what is missing. There are no mentions at all of the fantastic beers of Belgium, or the American "hybrid" styles like cream ale or amber ale. I love his methodical style of breaking down the beers, and I would really like to see this applied to these styles, especially the Belgians! Also there are a lot of simple grammar errors that any copy editor should have caught that get a bit distracting. I'd say time for a second edition with more beer styles!



4 out of 5 stars Excellent Reference Book   May 8, 2008
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

When I first got this book I didn't like it much. Why would I need all of this "data" when my BeerSmith program does all of the calculations for me? But as you perfect your style and technique--you find that you want to know "why" as much as "how". This book is GREAT for that. It is almost compulsively detailed and falls somewhere between a casual brewers how-to book and a full blown textbook of beer. Especially cool are the comparisons of the evolution of different styles; the grain bill comparisons for contest winning examples of styles; and the various graphs and charts which illustrate many of the intricacies of bringing beer within your BJCP guidelines.

I would say that this book is nearly indispensible for the intermediate homebrewer. Once you have figured out how to keep your equipment clean and the basics of brewing, this book is the next logical step. It does not replace a good brewing software program (like ProMash or BeerSmith) but it does let you know what is going on "behind the scenes" in those programs (how is it calculating my lovibond? how is it getting an ABV? why is that a style paramater?).

Get. This. Book.


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